P.D. MANGAN: Longevity Hacks: A Short Guide to Long, Healthy Life.

Before I discuss how to slow aging, let me get one common objection out of the way. The objection goes like this: “I don’t want to be old and frail longer. I saw how my [insert relative here] spent his/her last years, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Let me die when it’s my time.”

The answer to that objection is that we’re not talking about more years in a nursing home. We want more years of healthy, interesting, and exuberant life, and that’s what the science of anti-aging can deliver.

That’s because most chronic diseases are strongly linked to aging. From heart disease to cancer to Alzheimer’s to frailty, most chronic diseases hit older people. If aging can be slowed, then these chronic diseases can be either eliminated or pushed back much closer to the end of someone’s life.

Slowing aging means more years of healthy life, more years of youth.

As my then-90 year old grandmother said as I headed off to the gym: “Getting in shape for your old age, are you? You’d better!”